Butter in Dutch Art
Or, the Curious Shaped ButterYears ago I took at look at this curious food that kept showing up in Netherlandish art that some people had suggested as either bread, pastry or cheese. However, how this food stuff kept showing up in art seemed to total up as something else.
Lets compare:
- It shows up in dairy related scenes, next to a churn, cheese or other dairy products
- It shows up in kitchen cooking scenes
- It shows up on the table alongside breads
- It is usually packed in linens in a basket, or on a wood 'butter' trencher or delft plates
- It's yellow
- It has a consistant shape, oblong with tapered ends
- It appears to be soft enough to run a flower stem through
- It is usually sliced into, also showing the consistency of the colour throughout
These food items, if butter, might also be estimated to around a pound in weight and are, it seems, consistent in size. I figured this on an attempt to shape, and mark, a pound worth of butter in order to test the results and compare to the foodstuff found in the images.
As you can see, it is quite comparable to the images found to the right.
(most of these images were copied over from my old website where I lost part of the information that went along with them, however I know most of these can be attributed to Pieter Aertsen and Joachim Beuckler while the picnic cloth setting at the bottom, is by Lucas van Valkenborch)
EXPLORING BUTTER
Of course not all perculiar shapes of the yellow substance occurs in the commonly seen oblong, sometimes it appears in a moulded, fancy, shape and following the 16th century, it only seems to appear as a mass spooned, curled or sliced into a bowl or plate, though similar to the dishes the oblong is served upon.
I can only imagine that the foodstuffs in this picture by Heemskerck (directly to the right) is a fancy, moulded, butter which also happens to be on a handsomely set table.
Indeed, it also appears on tables belonging to less affluent families as found in the Brueghel painting to the left and the one below.
What might be of some interest is what Clara Peters, a Flemish painter, who painted in the first half of the 17th century, shows in her various still lifes where we can see butter, sliced this time, in dishes very similar to those that the oblongs were served upon.
A DIET OF BUTTER
According to various sources, butter was indeed enjoyed by the Dutch and used as oil was used in other parts of Europe. (1.) Indeed, it is noted that farmers were increasing butter and cheese production in the early 16th century and by the end of the century, dairying had already become a specialist industry. (2.)
Flemish Dairy Farm (17th century)
Certainly, butter continued to be a prevailing part of Dutch history as foriegn writers made note of not just the butter industry in Holland, but of thier consumption of the food stuff. This idea seems to go in the face of ideas that the yellow foodstuff could not possibly be butter because people did not consume it on it's own prior to the 17th century, sadly, all of the following commentary below is post 1600, however it also does show that butter was indeed a notable food item in the Low Countries where it was not elsewhere.
When Sir William visited Holland in 1652, he later wrote about it in his "Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands" and made a small comment on the sale and use of butter in Holland: "They send abroad the best of their own Butter, into all parts, and buy the cheapest out of Ireland, or the North of England, for their own use."
Later in 1673, John Ray offers us a sample of something a bit more descriptive from his "Observations topographical" where he describes the Dutch taking meat "which they cut into thin slices and eat with bread and butter laying the slices upon the butter". Though it may sound normal today, it was worth mentioning by an Englishman.
While in the second volume of "Modern History or the present state of all nations" (1745), Thomas Salmon goes into greater detail on how Dutch habits may have appeared to such a foreigner when he writes: "Their butter and cheese is extremely good, and the common people seldom take a journey without a butter-box in their pockets. This box is made in the shape of a churn, and holds down close with a wooden lid, the butter never works out. As they travel upon their canals in drawn boats, a man with a roll and his butter-box will make a very comfortable meal; and so extravagantly fond of their butter are this people, that I have seen some of them take it up and eat it by handfuls, without a knife or spoon."
THE BUTTER-BOX
In the 17th century, referring to a Dutchman as a "butter-box" was certainly not meant as a nice thing and it went beyond a mere comment on their eating habits. An example of this was when Richard Head wrote in jest, in "The Complaisent Companion" (1674): "When a Dutch man in a country tavern demanded to know 'why the English called his countrylmen butter-boxes', he was reputedly told 'because they find you are so apt to spread every where, and for your sauciness, must be melted down." This was quite a testament to the ill feeling the English had towards the Dutch domination of world trade during this time.
Dutch butter comsumption was still something of written commentary into the 18th century however, though not so harsh as it was during the Anglo-Dutch wars before England turned her focus towards France. By 1770, we see another descriptive of Dutch butter usage in the cookbook, "The British Housewife" where Martha Bradly comments on a Gooseberry sauce that "We learnt ours of the Dutch, who butter every Thing", a statement to which I found gently amusing considering past writings.
1. "In both of the Low Countries, unlike other parts of Europe, butter rather than oil was used", "In the 17th century dining: breakfast consited of bread and butter or cheese", "afternoon meal of bread with butter or cheese", "just before bedtime, leftovers from noon, or bread with butter or cheese or porridge were served",
accountbooks of the Amsterdam Municipal Orphanage listed both butter and cheese as being consumed by it's staff. "Matters of taste: food and drink in seventeenth-century Dutch art and life", Donna R. Barnes, Peter G. Rose, Albany Institute of History and Art, 2002
2. "The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modern World", By John F. Richards, 2006